Gotta Love The Sense Of Humor

When we had the big blowup last summer where Anthony Watts accused me of being wrong about high percentages of missing station data across the entire USHCN data set, Judy Curry finally figured it out after Paul Homewood posted a few examples of what was going on at specific stations.

And two days ago, Judy posted some crap from Zeke and Mosher accusing Paul Homewood of cherry-picking a few stations.

The rules are simple.

  1. If you use the entire data set like I did, it is too hard to understand
  2. If you pick a few examples like Paul did, you are cherry-picking
  3. People who tamper with data are experts
  4. People who call out the data tamperers must be marginalized

This really isn’t that hard to understand.

ScreenHunter_7083 Feb. 12 05.58

About Tony Heller

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46 Responses to Gotta Love The Sense Of Humor

  1. emsnews says:

    Good lord. I see that all the time at their site. They are desperate to be accepted by ‘officials’ who hate them and wish them ill. They get mad if anyone says anything rude about lying bastards who foist fake data on us.

    Kick them in the balls! 🙂

  2. Watts & Curry both think very highly of themselves, & suffer moreover from the Not Invented (or in this case Discovered) Here problem.

    • myrightpenguin says:

      For WUWT I would say that is the case, it’s become a kind of Microsoft of ‘scepticism’. As far as JC is concerned I just think she is being professorial and savvy, although her savviness of hosting Zeke/Mosher while staying largely away from the discussion doesn’t really help progress anything in this case.

      • gator69 says:

        You really need to read what Gail dug up on JC…

        I say that because that is where Judith Curry is making her money!

        …As president of Climate Forecast Applications Network LLC, [$1 mil. – $5 mil. in Revenue] I have been working with decision makers on climate impact assessments, assessing and developing climate adaptation strategies, and developing subseasonal climate forecasting strategies to support adaptive management and tactical adaptation….

        What is CLIMATE FORECAST APPLICATIONS NETWORK, LLC?

        A limited Liability Corporation with Judith Curry at it’s head scamming Americans.

        Number of Employees: 9
        Woman-Owned?: Yes (Judith???)
        Award Totals:
        Program/Phase Award Amount ($) # of Awards
        SBIR Phase I…….. $100,000.00………….. 1
        (SBIR = Small Business Innovation Research)
        STTR Phase I…….. $150,000.00…………… 1
        STTR Phase II …… $980,932.00 …………… 1
        ( STTR = Small Business Technology Transfer)

        There is much more to read at the link.

        • Rich O says:

          Yes, Gail devastatingly exposed Curry for what she is and there is no going back. She is a profit driven global warming opportunist, there is no middle ground.

        • myrightpenguin says:

          Well I’ll keep an open mind but that is disappointing to see gator69 as although her work such as Uncertainty Monster was good, as well as calling out Muller to an extent on graphical representations of BEST, I can see now how she could inhibit herself in helping to hasten the end of the pseudoscientific BS. Sigh.

    • darrylb says:

      I still respect Judith Curry. The amount of money she may be making is irrelevant. If she is a capitalist so be it.
      -and if people think highly of themselves- well yeah, I would rather see that than being a mouse in the corner.
      What I respect is the fact that she started out as a radical warmist, but then began engaging Steve McIntrye and for that she took a lot of crap from her former associates.
      Her main message is the science is not settled and that we have not only unknowns, but unknown unknowns. — and she has gotten Michael Mann all upset.
      Has anyone been reading her latest book, cowritten with the Russian. Can’t think of his name right now.
      The fact is she is engaging people from both sides of the argument,and by letting people like the Mosh pit in she may be gradually swaying more people.
      The trouble is; here, regardless of the value of info, the warmists rarely venture, and so it becomes a sort of preaching to the choir.
      The value for me at this sight is that I take the info elsewhere, and for that I want to give great credit to out host and also to Gail.
      Also, remember both Watts and Curry were invited to be part of the Best team but turned them down and Watts pointed out the errors in the best methods.
      He also did a lot of ground work in determining siting problems in US stations.
      He should not have reacted so quickly (and neither should Curry) in regards to the stuff on this thread.
      Having got their attention is a first step and a chance to begin driving a stake into their biased brains.

      • Gail Combs says:

        darrylb,
        All the background I have dug up on Judith screams Trojan Horse.

        First understand that her business partner is part of the Aspen Global Change Institute a group whose goal is coming up with the correct Climate Change Propaganda. Judith is not part of the group but that does not mean she is not one of their experiments in communicating Climate Change. It would be very stupid to have more than the slightest connections.

        Climate Communication is a non-profit science and outreach project supported by grants, including from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Climate Communication operates as a project of the Aspen Global Change Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering the scientific understanding of Earth systems and global environmental change…
        http://www.climatecommunication.org/who-we-are/about-us/

        WHAT WE DO

        We publicize and illuminate the latest climate research in plain language, making the science more accessible to the public and policy makers.

        Examples include our primer on climate change and our feature on extreme weather and its connections to climate change. We’ve also released a report on heat waves and climate change.
        ? We Assist Journalists
        We Support Scientists ?

        And guess who is on the staff of Climate Communication?
        Peter Gleick
        Katharine Hayhoe
        Michael Mann
        Jeff Masters
        Michael Oppenheimer
        Naomi Oreskes
        Jonathan Overpeck
        Benjamin Santer
        Kevin Trenbreth
        Don Wuebbles

        To name just a few.
        >>>>>>>>>>>

        Judith is a politically savvy Lady as I said before. She knows the skeptics are not neanderthal knuckle dragging idiots. She also said point blank it was dangerous to ignore us.

        …And finally, climate scientists and the institutions that support them need to acknowledge and engage with ever-growing groups of citizen scientists, auditors, and extended peer communities that have become increasingly well organized by the blogosphere….

        She recognizes the threat of the blogosphere and the need to neutralize the threat.

        In her own words, Judith Curry makes it clear her goal is to Rebuild Trust and she is smart enough to realize the sledge hammer tactics of the likes of Joe Rom and Cook and Loony Lew do not do that. This does not however mean she is not still on board the goal of the ‘Radical Transformation of America’ and Western civilization.

        My own experience in making public presentations about climate change has found that discussing the uncertainties increases the public trust in what scientists are trying to convey and doesn’t detract from the receptivity to understanding climate change risks (they distrust alarmism). Trust can also be rebuilt by discussing broad choices rather than focusing on specific policies.….

        In other words she is RESHAPING the message but the message and the goal have not changed just the method. Think of her as ‘The Good Cop’ in the classic ploy used on criminals.

        On the Credibility of Climate Research, Part II: Towards Rebuilding Trust
        Judith Curry, Georgia Institute of Technology
        I am trying something new, a blogospheric experiment, if you will. I have been a fairly active participant in the blogosphere since 2006….

        Losing the Public’s Trust
        Climategate has now become broadened in scope to extend beyond the CRU emails to include glaciergate and a host of other issues associated with the IPCC. In responding to climategate, the climate research establishment has appealed to its own authority and failed to understand that climategate is primarily a crisis of trust.

        Credibility is a combination of expertise and trust. While scientists persist in thinking that they should be trusted because of their expertise, climategate has made it clear that expertise itself is not a sufficient basis for public trust. The fallout from climategate is much broader than the allegations of misconduct by scientists at two universities. Of greatest importance is the reduced credibility of the IPCC assessment reports, which are providing the scientific basis for international policies on climate change. Recent disclosures about the IPCC have brought up a host of concerns about the IPCC that had been festering in the background: involvement of IPCC scientists in explicit climate policy advocacy; tribalism that excluded skeptics; hubris of scientists with regards to a noble (Nobel) cause; alarmism; and inadequate attention to the statistics of uncertainty and the complexity of alternative interpretations….

        In my informal investigations, I have been listening to the perspectives of a broad range of people that have been labeled as “skeptics” or even “deniers”. I have come to understand that global warming skepticism is very different now than it was five years ago. Here is my take on how global warming skepticism has evolved over the past several decades.

        In the 1980’s, James Hansen and Steven Schneider led the charge in informing the public of the risks of potential anthropogenic climate change. Sir John Houghton and Bert Bolin played similar roles in Europe. This charge was embraced by the environmental advocacy groups, and global warming alarmism was born….

        In the first few years of the 21st century, the stakes became higher and we saw the birth of what some have called a “monolithic climate denial machine”. Skeptical research published by academics provided fodder for the think tanks and advocacy groups, which were fed by money provided by the oil industry. This was all amplified by talk radio and cable news. [If she believes that crud my opinion of her just sank]

        Notice that this is EXACTLY what the group Climate Communication is all about:

        ….The often misinformed policy advocacy by this group of climate scientists has played a role in the political polarization of this issue.. The interface between science and policy is a muddy issue, but it is very important that scientists have guidance in navigating the potential pitfalls. Improving this situation could help defuse the hostile environment that scientists involved in the public debate have to deal with, and would also help restore the public trust of climate scientists….

        Judith’s goal is gaining the trust of the skeptics and it has nothing to do with changing her mind about CAGW.

        • drcrinum says:

          Good work Gail. Thanks.

        • Barbara says:

          Gail: On nearly a daily basis, I am grateful for your. incredibly excellent research/sleuthing.
          This Real Science site is truly an education for me (only a degree in English, apologies! Of course, I can spell well!) As an aside, being able to spot a typo instantly, I often wish the brilliant people posting here would re-read before sending. Stupid IPad sometimes doesn’t catch a letter and spell check doesn’t catch the difference between site and sight, etc.
          Still, what an education here. I am so grateful. Many thanks. I attend conferences and hope someday to meet the regulars here. Steve/Tony sometimes presents.

        • Disillusioned says:

          Gail, Wow. The disillusionment just keeps on coming. Thank you.

      • Gail Combs says:

        darrylb,

        I should also mention I started out fighting the BORG over 15 years ago in the lead up to the Food Safety Modernization Act.

        I learned from that politics is a real slime pit and those you thought were friends, those you were counting on will turn on you at the critical moment. I also ran into Stanley Greenberg pollster, strategist and master manipulator of the public. He directed Campaigns in 60 countries including Tony Blair in the UK and Clinton’s in the USA.

        Greenberg is also a strategic consultant to the Climate Center of the Natural Resources Defense Council on its multi-year campaign on global warming.

        In other words we are up against a world class political strategist.

        Republican pollster Frank Luntz says “Stan Greenberg scares the hell out of me. He doesn’t just have a finger on the people’s pulse; he’s got an IV injected into it.”

      • Gail Combs says:

        Also darrylb,

        Judith is not divorced from BEST andMuller:

        A paper from 2013 From the Berkeley team plus Judith Curry and Mosher.

        Influence of Urban Heating on the Global Temperature Land Average using Rural Sites Identified from MODIS Classifications
        Abstract

        The effect of urban heating on estimates of global average land surface temperature is studied by applying an urban-rural classification based on MODIS satellite data to the Berkeley Earth temperature dataset compilation of 36,869 sites from 15 different publicly available sources. We compare the distribution of linear temperature trends for these sites to the distribution for a rural subset of 15,594 sites chosen to be distant from all MODISidentified urban areas. While the trend distributions are broad, with one-third of the stations in the US and worldwide having a negative trend, both distributions show significant warming. Time series of the Earth’s average land temperature are estimated using the Berkeley Earth methodology applied to the full dataset and the rural subset; the difference of these is consistent with no urban heating effect over the period 1950 to 2010, with a slope of -0.10 ± 0.24/100yr (95% confidence).
        http://scitechnol.com/2327-4581/2327-4581-1-104.php

        • emsnews says:

          YES she is a ‘trojan horse’ and I note that frequently she puts up global warming articles that are just stupid as pile of steaming cow rear end push out fertilizer.

          Then she and her gang scolds all of us for making fun of these papers and snarling and joking about them and tells us to be nice and quiet and threatens us like a virgin school marm.

        • darrylb says:

          Gail, I keep thinking I am going to reply—and then there is more 🙂
          How come I am thinking about my mother? 🙂 now deceased.
          First again, thanks for the info.
          I first began getting my tip toes wet about six years ago when I said something to my my daughter,(who has degrees in biology and environmental sciences) that climate change is happening and something about melting ice and polar bears.
          She asked me., How do you know? I began with ‘they said…) She looked at me and said ‘They’? Then silence and we both knew she had me by the whiskers or wherever.
          So I set about trying to prove it. The first of the climategate emails were released shortly after that. ( I am a retired instructor in advanced placement chem and physics) I am gradually getting certain locals pissed off.
          —-A btw here from Gleick to Trenberth, what a list! Very familiar with all but Wuebbles.
          I keep getting more skeptical and also saddened by the human nature of the majority, but not all of the climate science community.
          Many of my former students are waiting for me to write a book, which we have discussed. but I keep finding more information and changing things.
          To be sure, I would give much credit to Steven/Anthony and to you, Gail.
          I just remembered that K. Hayhoe gave a lot of credit to the boys at skeptical science.
          Maybe she should pray about that.
          MN public radio just produced a six day marathon writing of climate change in MN in the Mankato Free Press. A daily which serves southern MN and has a distribution of 100,000, but that is decreasing. Young, non scientific talented but ignorant writers.
          I have had several ‘my views’ in the Free Press. Some would like the Free Press to be like the LA times and others and black ball me.
          I am going to respond to them categorically soon and I will mention some of it here before I do in case anyone would like to suggest anything.
          Darryl

  3. gator69 says:

    It is the unspoken ethic of all magicians to not reveal the secrets.
    -David Copperfield

  4. Pathway says:

    It’s the Alinsky way.

  5. A C Osborn says:

    I have noticed that there has not even been a peep about Paul Homewood’s work over on WUWT, even though Paul has had his posts hosted over there before and it is really gaining ground in the MSM.
    So there must be an agenda at WUWT.

    • u.k.(us) says:

      An agenda, eh ?
      If there wasn’t some dissension in the ranks, you might want to create some, it fires up the troops.
      It gets them thinking, plotting, strategizing, and keeps everyone on their toes.

    • Gail Combs says:

      Remember Anthony gets a lot of ‘help’ from Zeke and Mosher and Willis and L.S.

  6. Eliza says:

    I think they are s@@@ scared of taking on the establishment. remember Watts is a meteorologist and was a member of the system, so he would have many known colleagues ect there. Whatever happens, temps are not going up or down and probably will not budge for the next 1000 years so in the end it will all just fade away and no one will be prosecuted.

    • Gail Combs says:

      Long term the temperature can not go up although there were spikes at the end of the Eemian. Catastrophic Warming is not in the cards because there will not be enough solar energy at 65N for another 65,000 years. The only possible Catastrophic weather is glaciation and the jury is still out on that although this paper is considered definitive.

      A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic D18O records
      Lisiecki & Raymo

      ABSTRACT
      We present a 5.3-Myr stack (the ‘‘LR04’’ stack) of benthic d18O records from 57 globally distributed sites aligned by an automated graphic correlation algorithm. This is the first benthic d18O stack composed of more than three records to extend beyond 850 ka,…

      RESULTS
      Recent research has focused on MIS 11 as a possible analog for the present interglacial [e.g., Loutre and Berger, 2003; EPICA Community Members, 2004] because both occur during times of low eccentricity. The LR04 age model establishes that MIS 11 spans two precession cycles, with d18O values below 3.6% for 20 kyr, from 398 – 418 ka. In comparison, stages 9 and 5 remained below 3.6% for 13 and 12 kyr, respectively, and the Holocene interglacial has lasted 11 kyr so far. In the LR04 age model, the average LSR of 29 sites is the same from 398– 418 ka as from 250–650 ka; consequently, stage 11 is unlikely to be artificially stretched. However, the 21 June insolation minimum at 65°N during MIS 11 is only 489 W/m2, much less pronounced than the present minimum of 474 W/m2. In addition, current insolation values are not predicted to return to the high values of late MIS 11 for another 65 kyr. We propose that this effectively precludes a ‘‘double precession cycle’’ interglacial [e.g., Raymo, 1997] in the Holocene without human influence….

  7. emsnews says:

    We have been in a cooling cycle since the Minoan Warm Period. Each warm cycle is weaker than the previous one like all Interglacials which have the warmest part in the first 6,000 years. We are nearing the end of this Interglacial and will see increasing cold unless we find real global warming gases to save ourselves.

  8. Dave N says:

    So here’s a question for the alarmists (re: “cherry picking”): why would someone whose intention it is to highlight problems, discuss stations where there are none? They really take being idiotic to a new level.

  9. Dr. Shoosh Mondoogan says:

    @steve goddard

    you summed it up perfectly. Mosher especially likes to talk in technical terms to mislead people but they just dance around the issue. The line graph comparison pre and post adjustment says it all. Secondly, Zeke horsefeather and Mosher never ever discuss the more glaringly suspicious adjustments, like the lowering of 1934 temperatures. When did they adjust it? 2001? So that would be 67 years. After 67 years, they came up with a magical algorithm to make 1934 colder, hahahaha.

    • Streetcred says:

      Mosher is just one of those tools that sprouts “technical terms” to sell something … limited understanding but fools the grubers into thinking that he actually has something valuable to add. This is so plainly evident to anybody who has had anything to do with salesmen/women … “sell me this pen!”

    • DD More says:

      Mosher likes to think he can talk tech, but when called on adjustments he will dance away. Rud Istvan has him by the short hairs and Mosher disappears when you bring up BEST 166900 station adjustments. Here is an example and the back-story.

      https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/02/09/cooling-the-past-in-new-zealand/#comment-37538
      Rud Istvan permalink February 9, 2015 6:35 pm

      NIWA did the same to its version of NZ. See essay When Data Isnt in ebook Blowing Smoke. Strong evidence that the regional expectations assumption in all homogenization algorithms, no matter whose, is flawed. Best single example is BEST 166900, were the algorithm QC’d away 26 months of lows. 166900 is Amundsen Scott research base at the South Pole, arguably the best station on the planet. The nearest station from which to derive the regional expectation is McMurdo, 1300 km away and 2700 meters lower on Antarctic’s coast!

  10. richard says:

    ok an old story but still damn funny- I have a feeling this went on a lot in the few areas that were actually monitored.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/17/fabricating-temperatures-on-the-dew-line/

    ———————

    Its all utter claptrap, how can you compare estimations from today to estimations from the past.

    “Adding interest to the game was a suspicion that temperatures had generally increased since the late 19th century — at least in eastern North America and western Europe, the only parts of the world where reliable measurements went back so far”

  11. If I say there are a lots of bad apples in the barrel, but I’m told there are none, then I… you know… pull out a few bad apples, I suppose that would be “cherry-picking” bad apples. But, isn’t that the whole point? To show that there are… you know… bad apples in the barrel. What exactly is wrong with that methodology?

  12. richard says:

    more fun, guess another old un but still funny to repeat,

    “IIRC the vodka scam was tied into some sort of social benefit in kind, where the inhabitants of small Russian towns got extra money or vodka as “cold weather payments”. All they had to do was get the local civic head to tell Moscow what the temperature was each day. The more it fell below minus 20 (or whatever), the more vodka/money they got. While this “benefit” was in force, temperatures in Russia “fell” more and more. When it ended some time in the 1990s, temperatures “soared”. Well, who’d have guessed it?

    Well, that’s the story, but it may be apocryphal. Either way some alarmist will be hear to say that it is black propaganda put out by Koch and Monckton and demand proper citations, links and peer-review comments”

    • Gail Combs says:

      I heard the same story but it was the colder the temperature the higher the coal allotment for heating. Over at IceAgeNow one of the commenters said

      Mike says:
      February 7, 2015 at 4:04 pm

      My wife grew up in Zagreb and the government turning off the heat was pretty normal. If I understand correctly, energy was never decentralized from the government after communist rule. She hasn’t been there in 15 or 20 years but it seems they still haven’t built the infrastructure to keep people warm.
      http://iceagenow.info/2015/02/snowstorm-croatia-force-suspension-heating/#comment-283778

      So it looks like that story may have some basis in fact.

  13. Richo says:

    Hi Steve
    I think that the most devastating graphic you produced was the difference in the so called warming trends between the virtual (zombie) stations and the real stations. Does anyone have a copy of this graphic as I have not been able to locate a copy from previous posts from Steve??

  14. slimething says:

    I was a loyal reader of CA since its creation. Who remembers this post?
    http://climateaudit.org/2009/07/19/christy-et-al-2009-surface-temperature-variations-in-east-africa/

    • darrylb says:

      Yeah,I remember it. I was just beginning to ‘study’ climate change then and because of Steve M. and my lack of statistical training I gave myself a lot of headaches learning statistical methods.
      He stays within his expertise, but he is terrific within it.
      So glad he happened to pick up a ‘hockey stick’ brochure one day.
      We know Michael Mann et al are not glad.

  15. Neal S says:

    I just had an idea how to get around the claims of cherry-picking. Use some simple formula to ‘choose’ which stations to examine in detail. For example, every ‘N’th station where ‘N’ is selected to get some manageable number of stations. With such a mechanical formula for picking stations, it would be hard to make the claim if cherry-picking stick.

  16. Jimmy Haigh says:

    Maybe it’s that everyone wants to be the one that finally kills the scam? We saw a bit of that in the reaction to Jo Nova’s “notch model”. They were like cats in a bag.

    • gregole says:

      You could be on to something. I have no dog in the hunt so to speak. I’m just genuinely curious about what’s going on. A minute fraction of a degree warming over x-years is the crises of a generation? No. I’m ex-military, long time engineer, I think I know what constitutes a crisis, and this isn’t a crisis. It’s fascinating though. Watching all the egos punch through. And I am sorry for all the mis-guided policies this scam is spawning. Other than that, just typical madness-of-crowds nonsense.

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